ANIMAL GROWTH AND NUTRITION. 235 



amount which the market accepts as its value for a fertilizer), 

 and yet received, when fed against hay, more than I paid for 

 it as a food, and still had eighty per cent of my fertilizer left, 

 or forty dollars' worth. This is " eating your cake, and hav- 

 ing it." It is unnecessary to quote tables of manure-value of 

 food, they have become so common ; but by them it is seen 

 that cotton-seed meal has a manurial value of over four times 

 that of either good hay or corn-meal. To test the manurial 

 value of cotton-seed meal of the ration given, I used at rate 

 of a thousand pounds per acre, and received at rate per acre 

 of forty-nine bushels and four-tenths corn, and sixty-nine hun- 

 dred pounds stover. A section unmanured gave twenty-four 

 bushels and nine-tenths corn, and twenty-four hundred and 

 eighty pounds stover : cost of cotton-seed meal, fifteen dol- 

 lars ; value of excess growth over unmanured plot, thirty-five 

 dollars. Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert fed a given number of 

 sheep, over two acres of ground, with a ton of cotton-seed 

 meal ; by side of same an equal number of sheep, over a com- 

 panion two acres, were fed a ton of corn-meal : they harvested 

 in first season and first crop of second year fifteen hundred 

 pounds more hay where cotton-seed was fed than where corn- 

 meal was fed. Instances of the use of food for manures can 

 be easily multiplied ; and it can be shown, that, at market- 

 rates of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, the amount of 

 them in many foods (cotton-seed meal especially) is such as 

 to make them often cheaper sources of the named elements 

 of plant-nutrition than chemical fertilizers. The larger por- 

 tion of the value of a food for manure (of those so valuable 

 nitrogenous foods) consists in the nitrogen it contains ; and, 

 as the tendency now in New England is to esteem nitrogen 

 less than formerly, the value of food-tables for manure is 

 liable to be called seriously in question. Practically, I would 

 not esteem foods to have quite the relative theoretical value 

 now given, but substantially so ; for, by the use of nitroge- 

 nous foods, I would ignore entirely the purchase of nitrogen 

 in fertilizers, using purely minerals; the costly nitrogen being 

 got for a nominal sum by feeding nitrogenous foods, using 

 cotton-seed meal most, because at present, as a food for use 

 with coarse fodders, and as a source of manure, it is cheapest. 

 Let me repeat, that no New-England farmer is a skilful feeder 

 who organizes his rations without reference to the quality of 

 fertilizer his stock (manure-mills) are to make. 



